Penn State SCANDAL

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Barack Gump

Barack Gump: Dreadful is as dreadful does

LeRoy Goldman
The Shadow Knows

Published: Sunday, July 15, 2012 at 4:30 a.m.

I have been an advocate for health care reform since 1971 when I was the staff director of the U.S. Senate Health Subcommittee. I believe Its enactment is more urgently necessary now than it was then, as the spiraling costs of Medicare and Medicaid threaten to capsize the American economy. But the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that has withstood court challenge is not reform. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a case study in the arrogance of power laden with naivete and stupidity.

Just prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling, Robert Samuelson, a brilliant and nonpartisan op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, penned, “The Folly of Obamacare.” Samuelson is no right-wing nut, no apologist for the Republicans, no tea party fellow traveler. He was educated at Harvard, and has written on business and economics for the Post and Newsweek. He does not vote in elections for fear that it might compromise his impartiality as a writer.

He calls the ACA “dreadful public policy.” Here’s why:

First, Samuelson argues that the ACA increases uncertainty and decreases confidence when the recovery from the Great Recession requires just the opposite. What he means is that the law is so complex that people don’t know where they will get insurance or how much it will cost.

Second, he states that the ACA discourages job creation by raising the price of hiring. Requiring employers to purchase health insurance for some workers makes them more expensive. And because the employer mandate in the law exempts firms with fewer than 50 employees, there is a significant incentive for firms to stop hiring at 49.

Third, Samuelson argues that the ACA exacerbates the nation’s main problem — uncontrolled health spending. The government’s own actuaries forecast that health care costs will rise from 17.9 percent of GDP in 2010 to 19.6 percent by 2021.

Fourth, Samuelson argues that the ACA will worsen the federal budget problem. Medicare and Medicaid will soon consume one-third of the entire federal budget.

And lastly, he points out that the ACA discriminates against the young in favor of the old. It does this by forcing some young people to buy health insurance at artificially high premiums in order to pay for the care of older, sicker people. In other words, the ACA takes the problem imbedded in Medicare and Social Security and doubles down on it.

And what about the political process by which this law was written and passed? Barack Obama was swept into office on his promise of hope and change. It was the promise of a new day — the end of the gridlock and polarization in Washington.

The president’s opening move on the Washington chessboard was health care reform. But his move gave lie to his promise and was ill-fated.

What should he have done? Consistent with his promise to change Washington, he should have brought together all of the Democrats and Republicans from the health committees on the Hill and laid before them a set of legislative specifications for this mammoth undertaking. Those specs should have had reform of Medicare and Medicaid as their centerpiece.

Then he should have challenged the Republicans to improve his proposal. For example, he should have invited them to add tort reform to the proposal. That would have made clear to them and to the nation that a bill of this magnitude had to have bipartisan support.

Now don’t give me this “But the GOP wouldn’t play ball” malarkey. In 2009, the tea partyers hadn’t yet come to power in the House of Representatives — Obama hadn’t yet handed them their victory.

But Obama did none of the aforementioned. It was an inexcusable strategic blunder by a neophyte who emasculated his signature program before the battle was joined. It’s what happens when you send an amateur to do a professional’s job. And then he sealed the bill’s fate. He turned the job of writing it over to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

And what did they do? They did the same old, same old. They slammed the door in the Republicans’ face and wrote their own bills. And then they found they could not muster enough Democratic votes to get them passed. And so they did what Washington does: They sold their souls to the devil. They went to the health industry lobbyists and let them write a bill to their own liking in order to get the votes needed to pass it. Thus, a bill intended to reform the health care industry became one the industry wrote.

And after 15 months of this tortured nightmare, the administration and the Democrats were cornered. Either they had to lie and say the bill was just what the doctored ordered, or they faced defeat of the president’s signature legislative initiative. Of course, they chose the former.

The stupidity of all of this is mind numbing — all the more so given the fact that the president had Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel, Tom Daschle and Bill Clinton advising him.

Thus, the bill passes with no bipartisan support — none. During its consideration, the nation is torn in half over something no one understands. And, since its enactment, neither the president nor the Democrats will give voice to the monstrosity that is the ACA. They won’t because they know the ACA is fatally flawed and politically toxic.

And two years after the president was swept into office with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, the tea party chickens come home to roost on Capitol Hill. Obama’s blunder has given birth to those who will now stop at nothing to thwart him. In truth, this is a story so surreal that no one would believe it, except for the fact that it’s true.

So what’s the bottom line? The ACA masquerades as health care reform. It isn’t. It was written by the industry that it was supposed to transform — the health insurance companies, Big Pharma, the hospitals and organized medicine. The ACA masquerades as the solution to runaway medical costs. It isn’t. It will accelerate the explosive growth of Medicare and Medicaid, and that will strangle the federal budget and the budgets of the several states.

Given the tortured and polarized process by which it was created, it can’t be fixed. It’s got to be killed, and there is a way to do it. If the GOP retains control of the House, captures the Senate, and Mitt Romney is elected, the ACA can be thrown on to the rubbish heap of history.

But wait, you say, even if the Republicans take control of the Senate, they won’t have the 60 votes necessary to shut down a filibuster. Yes, you’re right. But there is a legislative process, called reconciliation, that applies to tax legislation and that only requires a simple majority, 51 votes. It grew out of our passage of the Budget Act in 1974. A reconciliation bill can’t be filibustered.

In the question period following a lecture I delivered at Blue Ridge Community College last January, I was asked how the Supreme Court would rule on Obamacare. I said I had no clue, but I believed that the side that lost the case would be the beneficiary in the November election.

PLEASE VISIT:  Citizens Against Politics As Usual

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John Roberts: Traitor or genius?

First of a two-part series: Next Sunday: Putting the Affordable Care Act back in the people's court.

Never before has U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's four liberals in a 5-4 decision — until now with his vote that preserves the president's Affordable Care Act.

During the oral arguments before the high court last March, it appeared likely that the court would strike it down as an unconstitutional stretching of the Commerce Clause. All five of the conservative justices, including Roberts, were relentless in their questioning of U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, whose job it was to defend the act.

But today the law stands. How could it have happened? Republicans are in mourning. Conservatives feel betrayed and see Roberts as a traitor. Is the Apocalypse upon us? Take heart. It isn't.

Roberts is conservative, brilliant, ambitious and much concerned with his legacy. He's a chess player who has left us with an encrypted opinion. Our task is to decipher it. Sean Trende helps us crack the code in an essay titled, "The Chief Justice's Gambit."

Trende argues Roberts' majority opinion is nothing short of the clever brilliance employed by Chief Justice John Marshall in the 1803 landmark Marbury v. Madison decision that established the precedent for judicial review. Marshall's decision found that Marbury did have a right to his commission to become a justice of the peace, which the Jefferson administration had refused to grant, but that the provision of the Judiciary Act that empowered the Supreme Court to issue the writ of mandamus that Marbury sought, and never received, was unconstitutional.

This enabled Jefferson to win the case, but more importantly, it established the court's power of judicial review.

Trende argues powerfully that Roberts is no less clever and just as skilled as Marshall in his opinion regarding the Affordable Care Act.

Most court watchers had expected that the fate of the centerpiece of the law, the individual mandate, would be determined on the basis of whether it was a legitimate extension of the authority contained in the Constitution's Commerce Clause. Basically the question was whether the federal government could force individuals to enter commerce, that is, purchase health insurance, or penalize them if they did not. But the mandate's constitutionality might be upheld in another way.

In oral arguments last March before the high court, Verrilli also argued that the individual mandate was constitutional based on the Constitution's tax authority. In other words, Verrilli argued that the penalty imposed on an individual who refused to purchase health insurance was simply a tax, and that such a tax was plainly constitutional.

Roberts, seeing the yawning opening in front of him, joined the four liberal justices and wrote the majority opinion upholding the individual mandate based on the tax argument. Thus, the law stands.

But Roberts also joined the four conservative justices and argued that the mandate could not be justified under the Commerce Clause. Having ruled the mandate constitutional under the tax authority, Roberts did not need to address the question of whether it was constitutional under the Commerce Clause. But he did. Thus, the scope of the Commerce Clause has been significantly narrowed. And that is a doctrinal shift that may well become a treasure trove of court rulings for conservatives down the road.

And there's more. The second major issue the court resolved involved the question of whether the federal government had the constitutional authority under the Constitution's Spending Clause to attach strings to legislation without limit. The Affordable Care Act contains a gigantic expansion of the federal-state Medicaid program. Congress drafted it so that if a state chose not to participate in the expansion of the program, it would lose all of its federal Medicaid funding.

Roberts and six other justices struck down this draconian provision, thus permitting any state to forgo the expansion and still retain its Medicaid funding. Thus, the Roberts court has set a precedent that imposes significant limits on Congress' authority to attach conditions to legislation. This doctrinal precedent will likely bear much fruit for conservatives in future decisions.

Also, Roberts has brilliantly shielded the court from the hyper partisanship that would certainly have occurred had the court driven a stake into the act's heart. Accordingly, he has strengthened the court's conservative hand as it is about to consider multiple high-stakes cases involving affirmative action, campaign finance and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

By properly voting to save the act, Roberts has given the president a victory for now, but has also cornered him. The president has praised the court's decision, which makes clear that the individual mandate will be enforced by a new middle-class tax. And that's something the president has previously and repeatedly said he opposes. In addition, the president has consistently maintained that mandate's penalty is not a tax. But the president's solicitor general and now the Supreme Court have said it is just that — a tax.

Roberts has hoisted the president on his own petard, and left the ultimate fate of the Affordable Care Act where it belongs — in the hands of the voters. Roberts opined, "The Court does not express any opinion on the wisdom of the Affordable Care Act. That judgment is reserved to the people."

Just as Chief Justice Marshall outmaneuvered President Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice Roberts has outfoxed President Barack Obama.

Next Sunday: Putting the Affordable Care Act back in the people's court.

PLEASE VISIT: Citizens Against Politics As Usual

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Our humble take on the July 17 runoff

Our humble take on the July 17 runoff

Last fall, we founded Citizens Against Politics As Usual (CAPAU). We did so because we believe the government in Washington is hopelessly broken. It simply doesn't work any more, and it hasn't for at least the past 15 years. We also know that both political parties are responsible for the deadlock in the puzzle palaces that line the banks of the Potomac and on Capitol Hill.

And while the Congresses and presidents have shirked their responsibility to lead and to govern, the nation's peril grows. The peril goes far beyond the faltering economy, an anemic recovery and skyrocketing national debt. It gnaws at the foundations of all that Americans hold dear: individual freedom, liberty and self-governance — the essence of our cherished way of life.

As far as we are concerned, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party no longer deserve our support because they have chosen to put their own self-interests above our interest, the public interest. The brutal truth of that reality stares all of us in the face.

It doesn't make a scintilla of difference which political party controls the White House or the Congress. The hard fact of the matter is that there is no coherent, agreed-upon plan to ignite the floundering economy. There is no plan that gives hope of adequate job creation. There is no plan to tamp down the spiraling growth of the national debt. There is no plan to free America from its bondage and addiction to Middle East oil.

There is no plan to reform an immigration system that works against our national well-being. There is no plan to reform an income tax system that has been twisted by lobbyists' self-serving amendments into a labyrinth that only they understand and derive benefit from. There is no plan to lift the educational skills of our young people and the vocational skills of many more in the interconnected world of information technology.

No, instead of plans, instead of action, instead of reasonable compromise, we have had years of increasingly bitter stalemate in Washington in which the two parties attempt to persuade us that all the blame belongs on the shoulders of their opponents. If that is all they will do, they don't deserve our support. And that is why CAPAU calls for the defeat of all incumbents.

Happily, voters here in the 11th Congressional District of North Carolina don't need to worry about that issue this year. Our incumbent congressman, Heath Shuler, has taken himself off the field of play. Thus, our task is to pick the individual best equipped to replace him. And that brings us to the runoff election July 17 between Mark Meadows and Vance Patterson. In the Republican primary in May, Mr. Meadows won, but he did not win more than 40 percent of the vote, thus requiring a runoff between him and Mr. Patterson, who came in second.

We interviewed Mr. Patterson at length on June 13. We interviewed Mr. Meadows at length on June 14. And we attended the two-hour spirited debate between them sponsored by the Henderson County Tea Party on June 19.

This runoff may well be the decisive election in respect of selecting Western North Carolina's next congressman. We say that because of congressional redistricting based on the 2010 census. The state Legislature has significantly changed the district boundaries for many of North Carolina's congressional districts, including ours here in the Mountains. Those changes appear to have given the Republican Party an advantage by 6-7 percent.

We believe Mr. Meadows and Mr. Patterson have much in common. They strike us as intelligent, honest, ethical and patriotic. Both are successful businessmen with significant experience in the private sector. Both put faith and family at the center of their lives. Both understand that Washington is broken, and each says that, if elected, he won't go up there and become part of the same-old, same-old. Both oppose much of what President Barack Obama and the liberal Democrats have done or tried to do.

Thus, in our judgment, this choice is a close call. That said, we believe the edge, a clear edge, goes to Mr. Meadows. We believe he has a clearer grasp of the breadth and severity of the problems facing the nation and the necessity of forging workable legislative solutions that are broadly acceptable In the House of Representatives. If he actually delivers on that promise, he will have served all of the residents of this district well — not just those who voted for him. If elected, it's the standard to which all of us should hold him. You can be certain that CAPAU will hold whomever is elected to that standard.

Our purpose here has been to tell you what we think. It has not been to tell you how to vote. That is and should be your decision. We do, however, urge you to inform yourself and then vote in the GOP runoff July 17 if you are a registered Republican or an unaffiliated registrant who did not vote a Democratic ballot in the May primary.

PLEASE VISIT:  Citizens Against Politics As Usual

PLEASE VISIT: Mike Tower Political Opinions